Nearly 90 percent of donations to university were under $5,000

And when the University of Tennessee's $1 billion fundraising campaign hit high gear, the UT-Knoxville employee of 33 years opened up her own pocketbook.

Blair, a manager in the Office of Development, better known as fundraising, pledged to give $1,000.

"To me, that's a whole lot of money," she said. "For some people, a million dollars is what they feel they need to give, and for me, well, it doesn't have quite that many zeros."

Her gift counts toward the billion-dollar goal the university system set five years ago.

University administrators are expected today to announce to trustees in a board committee hearing that UT has surpassed that target a year early.

The most recent tally, done in March, was $995 million - less than 1 percent from the $1 billion mark.

While the bulk of that money is coming from generous, large-scale donors whose names will be on campus buildings and endowment funds, the heart of the campaign has come from people such as Blair, officials insist.

Nearly 90 percent of the 98,000 people who wrote checks to the university gave less than $5,000.

Most of those gave less than $1,000 and many on payment plans similar to Blair, who is spreading her gift over three years. They give what they can spare from monthly household budgets.

"It shows that the alumni and friends value the institution, they value their degree, they value the impact this university has on the state, and they value the work that the faculty is doing," said Scott Rabenold, director of the Campaign for Tennessee. "I look at each of those donations as a validation of the good work happening on each campus."

The campaign began quietly in early 2005 and went public in April 2008, By then, the university had raised about $700 million.

The strategy, Rabenold said, was to connect with the alumni one-on-one, make them feel appreciated for their gifts and to connect their interests with a program or cause within the university.

Gary Dunavant, a midlevel manager at AT&T in Birmingham, Ala., and a UT alum, had already decided he wasn't going to increase his annual $100 gift when a College of Arts and Sciences representative called and asked to take him to lunch.

"He didn't put on any particular pressure. It was low-key," Dunavant said. "It was just the personal contact. It's being appreciated for what I had given in the past and the university reaching out to me on a personal level."

Several days later, Dunavant, feeling connected to the alma mater he left decades ago, pledged to give $1,000 over three years.

Those kinds of meetings and pledges from donors promising less than $5,000 brought in $23.3 million toward the campaign, according to university numbers.

They have come mostly from alumni and employees.

Bernie Rosenblatt is neither.

A retired educator with degrees from the University of Miami, Stanford and Columbia, he came to East Tennessee 14 years ago to run the Arnstein Jewish Community Center in Knoxville.

He quickly got involved with the university, serving on advisory boards and meeting with faculty and students.

Retired for four years, he talks enthusiastically about the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, using words like "our" and "us."

Though he declined to disclose how much he gives, he said it's not as much as he'd like.

"The campaign is sorely needed to ensure the future and the direction university is going in," Rosenblatt said. "I'm thrilled with the activity going on there and the serious commitment to higher education that the university has, from president to chancellor to department heads to faculty and certainly the students."

Fundraising is perpetual, and the push for donors won't stop with the $1 billion, said Rabenold, recently named the interim vice chancellor for development at the Knoxville campus last week.

The new president and trustees will likely decide the focus, goals and time line for the next campaign. With dwindling state funding, the need for private donations is greater than ever, Rabenold said.

"The reality is the university will not be done raising private support at the end of this campaign," he added. "It will continue to need alumni and friends to make investments in order to make the university as great as aspires to be."